Audrey Dickerson laid to rest on 103rd birthday

Audrey Dickerson, who passed away last month, was laid to rest at the Reber Cemetery on July 1, 2016, what would have been her 103rd birthday. “She was one of most amazing people any of us will ever know,” said Eric Arnold, who delivered the eulogy. “She was here to do the work of caring for and about others.”

Photo by Pete DeMola

Reber Cemetery

REBER — Remember the small moments:

Fresh-baked pastries on holiday mornings. Being bounced on one knee during a visit. Hand-sewed Raggedy Ann dolls and dresses… a shared look of knowing, that classic twinkle in the eye.

A soft summer rain fell at the Reber Cemetery as Eric Arnold delivered the eulogy for the Dickerson family matriarch, Audrey “Audey” Dickerson, who passed away on June 15

Dickerson had come full circle.

Surrounded by five generations of family— altogether, she had 112 nieces and nephews — Dickerson was laid to rest on July 1, her 103rd birthday, and just a click down the country lane from the farmhouse where she was born, the second-eldest of nine siblings born to Clarence and Maude (Strannahan) Dickerson.

Dickerson was the last of her generation, which spanned from 1911, when her eldest brother, Loren, was born to Doris in 1928.

Clarence died young and Dickerson helped raise her siblings.

Several of the boys dropped out of school to work on the farm. But Dickerson remained enrolled, catching a ride to the schoolhouse on a milk truck.

The roar of car engines would frighten her, she told the Sun in an 2013 interview.

“The dirt roads in Reber were connected to the mountains,” she said. “Every now and again, you would have the rum runners come through town during Prohibition. You could hear those big engines — they were roaring. I would climb up the highest bank I could find and hide from them until they went away.”

Dickerson graduated from Willsboro Central in 1933 and got a job working for G.E. in Buffalo making military equipment, assembling gun mounts for airplanes.

Following the war, she continued to work alongside other family members at the factory, later moving to Schenectady, where she spent 33 years in the company’s accounting department.

She lived in Scotia until 1996, when she decided to return to her hometown to be closer to family.

Once she did so, not a single life was left untouched, said Sue Swires, a niece.

While she never married, Dickerson quickly fell into the role of family matriarch, dispensing advice — “No matter what you do, take time to enjoy yourself” — and extending selfless care for the ever-expanding flock, including babies, which she loved.

Over time, said Swires, it became easier for her great-aunt to openly express her emotions and say those three magic words:

I love you.

“That was big,” recalled Swires on hearing those words for the first time.

But it became easier in later years, said Pam Arnold, a grandniece.

Dickerson also enjoyed sewing, bowling, casino trips and wintering in Florida with a lifelong friend, Maxine.

Family members often spoke of a mischievous twinkle in her eye. And always modest, Dickerson shied away from attention.

A surprise party for her 100th birthday at the old family farmhouse, for instance, drew disapproval, said Arnold.

Dickerson eventually got over her Prohibition era fear of cars and drove up until she was 100.

“She was sharp as a tack up until she was 101, I would say,” Swires said.

In recent years, Dickerson would often comment on her longevity: “I don’t know why I’m living so long,” Eric recalled her as saying. “More than 100 years is too much.”

Dickerson completed another life circle when she moved to the Champlain Valley Senior Community in Willsboro for her final years, which occupies the former schoolhouse.

While she never liked school, Swires recalled, Dickerson had the highest average for her class one year.

Following a brief illness, she passed away at the Elizabethtown Community Hospital on June 15, going peacefully on her own terms, “with the grace, beauty and dignity of royalty,” Eric said.

The rain pattered on umbrellas on Friday, where Dickerson rejoined her siblings and parents, all of whom are buried in this place ringed by mountains, swirling mist and country roads cutting through fertile soil.

Eric urged the congregation to remember her “soft-spoken strength, toughness, courage and kind heart” — and to enjoy a slice of strawberry shortcake in her memory.

“Her life journey has taken her many places and provided her many blessings,” Eric said. “Be assured she is happy and resting easy as her life has come full circle, bringing her back home to Reber.”

Eric finished speaking.

The urn containing her remains was placed in a yellow box inlaid with a rose.